Bellamy Brothers Share Track List, Cover Art, Lead Single from ‘Bucket List’ EP
Six-song set includes "No Country Music for Old Men" with pal John Anderson.
For more than four decades, the Bellamy Brothers have built a successful career with songs that make people smile. From their breakthrough hit “Let Your Love Flow” to such classics as “If I Said You Had Beautiful Body Would You Hold it Against Me,” “Redneck Girl” and “Old Hippie,” Howard and David Bellamy have always kept the positive vibes coming. They do so again with their new EP Bucket List, which releases July 10.
“Maybe it’s the wrong time to release fun stuff, but at the same time I think it may be the right time,” David Bellamy tells Sounds Like Nashville in a phone call from their Florida ranch. “None of these songs are very serious. . . The way we write and sing, it’s just us. We couldn’t change it if we tried, and people expect that from us. Our fans look forward to hearing this kind of stuff, so I think they’ll enjoy this batch of songs. We’re excited about putting them out.”
The first single is “Rednecks (Lookin’ for Paychecks),” a humorous take on current economic woes. “I wrote it maybe 10 days after everybody got grounded and was home,” Bellamy says. “Howard and I actually recorded it on my iPhone sitting in the back of his camper and put it up on social media. It got quite a few hits and we were just going to do that with it. When we decided to finish the EP, Howard said we should cut it so we went ahead and did a track on it as well as the acoustic version.”
Bellamy says the title track isn’t a candidate for radio airplay, but he thinks fans will appreciate it. “It’s a good ole fashioned shit kicker, but it’s a break-up song, a real direct break up song. I can guarantee you they won’t play it on the radio,” he says with a laugh.
John Anderson joins the Bellamys on “No Country Music for Old Men,” a song that was inspired by Kenny Rogers’ passing. “When Kenny Rogers died I saw the tambourine that Kenny had given us. It was in the studio because we had actually used it on a track,” says Bellamy, noting this song is the only one on the EP with a more serious tone. “It’s about losing people like Kenny and Charlie [Daniels] and people like that because we’re getting to that era where everybody is aging and that era of country music is going to be real hard to replace. A lot of people now have a hard row to hoe because the songs and voices from that era were just monumental.”
View this post on InstagramA post shared by The Bellamy Brothers (@bellamy_brothers) on
Before concert tours stopped due to the pandemic, Anderson and the Bellamys had been on the road performing with Blake Shelton. “We decided to get John to sing on this song and it turned out really great,” says Bellamy. “He recorded it at Buddy Hyatt’s studio in Hendersonville [TN]. I was on the phone with him and Buddy while they were doing it, and when we got the vocal back, me, Howard and Randy [Hiebert] opened it up and it was like Christmas, ‘Oh listen to this! Listen to this!’”
Another standout track is “Sunshine State of Mind.” “This is a really cool tune that Howard started and I helped him finish it,” Bellamy says. “It’s almost a reggae gospel kind of song and has a little bit of a gospel melody to it. We really love it, and we’ve got a kid’s choir singing on it. The chorus happens kind of in a round so I got Buddy [Hyatt] to get two or three kids to sing on it. He got some kids that go to his church and he [recorded] them and sent it to me. It sounds really, really cool.”
Howard and David recorded the album at the studio on their ranch, co-producing with their longtime band member Randy Hiebert. “His influences are so broad,” Bellamy says of Hiebert. “I could look at him and say, ‘Play Jimmy Page,’ and he’d play it and he’d rip it up. I could say, ‘Play a Buck Owens’ riff,’ and he rip it up. He just doesn’t have a barrier and I love that about him. He can do it all and has done it all.”
The EP cover, which you get a first look at here, was designed by David, his son Noah, who is also a musician, and photographer/videographer Derrek Kupish, who works with them on their reality show Honky Tonk Ranch. “I had run across the graphic somewhere and I sent it to Noah to see if he could put something together for me and I told him what I wanted to call the EP,” Bellamy says. “So he put something together and in the process of putting it together, Derrek said, ‘Well let’s flag your logo in and then make the background more colorful,’ so the three of us actually designed it together. It’s almost like stained glass looking behind the bucket. I just thought it’s the middle of summer, and even though we are in kind of a crazy time, these are summertime songs and they are a little off the wall because it’s sort of off the wall times, so we decided to go colorful.”
The Bellamy Brothers are well known for maintaining a packed tour schedule that finds them performing all over the globe. Being at home on their family ranch during the pandemic is the longest they’ve ever been off the road since they began their award-winning career. David says writing songs and recording this new music has helped keep them sane. “We literally went from doing all those huge halls with Blake and sold out every night with 15,000-20,000 people there and then all of a sudden we’re sitting at home and I’m planting a garden three days later, wondering what the heck is going on like everybody else,” he says.
“We filmed a couple of episodes of the show because we could do them here at the house just with our crew so it wasn’t a lot of exposure,” he says of being mindful of the coronavirus while filming Honky Tonk Ranch. “We did a couple episodes of the show and then did the EP.”
They’ve also been working on the ranch, which has been in their family for generations. Both Howard and David have homes on the property. “We haven’t left the ranch too much to do anything, just get our groceries. I don’t even go to the big grocery stores because I have a couple of small groceries out in the woods here so I just go buy a few things here and there and make a crock pot full of something and then we stay home,” says Bellamy, who has been quarantining with his wife Susan and their dogs Waylon and Willie along with his mother-in-law Vivian, who has been visiting from Texas with her dogs Bentley and Mochi. “Viv came down and figured she’d be here a month and she’s spending a year with us.”
The Bellamys spread is a working ranch with a thriving cattle business. “Howard has been delivering quite a few calves this year. We have a big calf crop. We’ve had probably so far maybe 50 or 60 calves born here at the old place,” Bellamy says. “We have Brahman [cattle]. Every year we raise a calf crop. We’ve scaled down over the years somewhat just because we can’t do it all like we used to when [our mom] Frances was alive and we were running a bigger operation, but we still have a real nice operation here.”
Like all other artists, the Bellamys are looking forward to getting back out on the road whenever it’s safe to do so. “It’s definitely beyond my knowledge. I don’t know what will happen,” he says of the pandemic and it’s impact on touring. “We lost a lot of dates of course when we were supposed to do them in March, April and May, but on the other hand, we were lucky because almost 100% of them got rescheduled. We only actually cancelled one or two and all the rest are rescheduled. Of course, they could be rescheduled again as far as we know. We had to move our European tour all the way to next June.”
Bucket List EP Track Listing:
Produced by The Bellamy Brothers and Randy Hiebert
Mixed and Mastered by Buddy Hyatt
- No Country Music for Old Men with special guest John Anderson
Songwriter: David Bellamy - Bucket List
Songwriter: David Bellamy - Sunshine State of Mind
Songwriters: Howard Bellamy/David Bellamy - Okeechobee
Songwriter: David Bellamy - Rednecks (Lookin’ for Paychecks)
Songwriter: David Bellamy - Lay Low, Stay High
Songwriter: Howard Bellamy
